Conference Dates: August 8 to August 11, 2013
University of Washington – Gould Hall, School of Landscape Architecture

In 2013 two great events in the urban gardening world will happen in Seattle. The Seattle P-Patch community gardening program, one of the premier community gardening programs in the country, celebrates its 40th birthday, and the American Community Gardening Association, the premier national representative of community gardening and a pioneer in urban agriculture, returns to Seattle to celebrate its national conference.

‘Farm-City State’ explores the idea of what if an entire city could feed itself with healthy, local, organic food.

David Barrow and team have teamed up to document Austin’s progress into the nation’s popular local food movement. ‘What if an entire city could feed itself?’

The Austin food landscape has changed. Over the past 6 years, more than a dozen farmers markets have opened, restaurants started sourcing locally, the public is purchasing and seeking out local food, and the legislature has taken notice – how do we create a good local economy?

The French company Vilmorin-Andrieux & Cie arose in the 18th century from the collaboration of Philippe Victoire de Vilmorin—a grain and plant merchant and connoisseur—and his father-in-law, Pierre Andrieux, Botanist to the King. The Vilmorins, though only producers and merchants on the Paris market, contributed enormously to the botanical and agronomic knowledge of their time. Their first catalogue, comprising all kinds of seeds for kitchen-garden vegetables—including legumes, salad plants, flower seeds and bulbs—appeared in 1766. It was followed by a series of Publications périodiques in which the quality of botanical and horticultural information was equaled only by the illustrations. By the mid-19th century, the firm had become the most important seed company in the world—active in production, trade, and scientific advances, thanks largely to Louis de Vilmorin’s crucial research into selection and heredity in the 1850s.